Step Seventy-Eight, Carry the Change
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1600: Graduation is nearing, and Burt has something to show Brittany that she, and Santana, and Kurt, and Jude, can't wait to show Harry. - Paper Heart series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 76th cycle. Now cycle 77!_

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**"Step Seventy-Eight, Carry the Change"  
Brittany/Santana, Kurt/Jude (OC), Burt, Harry (OC)  
Paper Heart series  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_**

**(a year and a half later)**

Burt had looked very pleased with himself when he'd walked through the door, and finding Brittany in the living room, he signalled to her in a way she'd taken to interpret as 'where is he?' The 'he' was always Harry. When she told him he was upstairs, napping, Burt beamed excitedly.

"Check out what I got," he pulled a bag out from behind him, which she hadn't noticed until then.

"What is it?" she asked, sitting up as he came and joined her on the couch. He reached inside and, in one swift move, tipped his cap from his head and replaced it with another, the kind that came with a tassel. Although in this case the cap was clearly much too small for him, Brittany understood what it was meant to be and she gasped.

At two and a half, they could hardly expect for Harry to understand what graduation was, but then he had seen them all trying on their caps and gowns, and he'd instantly been obsessed with the tasselled hat. Brittany had happily taken hers from her head and attempted to place it on her son's. His curls tried their best to keep the thing perched on his head, but it was evidently too big and wouldn't stay. But now thanks to his grandfather he would have one of his own, and it would fit.

"He's gonna love it!" Brittany hugged Burt, just as the doorbell rang. The blonde made for the door, keeping the small hat hidden behind her back. As Santana had walked in, Brittany had now been the one to anxiously show what she kept hidden. When she did, Santana gasped and covered her mouth, knowing both by the time and Brittany's subdued voice that Harry would be napping.

"Did you…" she started to ask, but Brittany quickly pointed to Burt, who stood, once again proud of his find. "Genius," she couldn't stop smirking and they hadn't even shown it to Harry yet.

"What's going on?" The three turned and looked up the stairs as Kurt was coming down. Now Santana was the one to show the cap, and Kurt's jaw did a half drop.

"Your Dad got it for Harry," she told him. "Who knows, he might wear it all the time and start a trend."

"What, like academic chic?" Kurt suggested before turning to his father, smiling.

It would be a while more before Harry woke up and they could present him with his new hat – Brittany would insist that Burt be the one to give it, since it had been his gift. As they waited, they definitely had plenty to talk about, though most of it tended to veer back to the biggest topic on hand, and that was graduation. Against all odds, they would be there, all three of them getting their diplomas, leaving McKinley High behind for bigger and better things.

For Brittany, it meant New York. Of course it meant New York for the others, too, Harry included, but she knew deep down it would have a special meaning all its own where she was concerned.

Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she hadn't gotten pregnant, if she hadn't had this reason to pull her life together. Would she still have done it, or would school have remained as much of a slow mental death for her? She didn't want to think about it like that. She preferred to remember her actual accomplishments. She wasn't exactly the top of the class, but she was somewhere around the middle, and that was something she had never expected to happen. For a long while she had bad dreams, where she couldn't graduate, year after year, and she remained at McKinley, getting older and never going anywhere. Back then she'd honestly believed there was no way out for her, no way that she'd be able to do a thing about this.

Whenever she would tell Mr. Schuester about how much he'd changed things for her, how much this was all his doing – and she did try to tell him every so often, as it bore repeating – he would counter in saying that it was as much her accomplishment as it was his, more so hers than his actually. She didn't see how she would have been able to get through it without him though, without all of those who'd been there to support her.

Santana's place in all this support was special all on its own. Having her by her side was everything she could have ever wanted. They'd been best friends first, and then they had evolved into what they remained to this day, girlfriends. They'd been going strong and getting stronger from the moment they'd gotten together. Santana was the girl she loved, and more than that, she had become a second mother to Harry, something she hadn't been forced into like her, although she hated to use the word 'forced.' She could have backed out of it, but she hadn't. She'd loved Harry like her own, even before he was born.

And Harry loved her back. He called her Mama, and she seemed to have this magical power of getting him quiet and focused, which did come in handy on a number of occasions. He would stare up at her with those blue eyes, and there was no tearing him away until he decided it was time.

"Did you text him?" Brittany asked as they all stood around the kitchen. Over time they had gone and developed their own sort of system in preparing dinner, and with all hands on deck, there was no way they could go wrong.

"Yeah, he said he'd be here in…" Kurt started to reply before being interrupted by the doorbell. He went and answered, returning with Jude in tow. Without needing to ask, Burt went and got an extra plate and utensils.

"Show him, show him," Brittany beamed.

"Show me what?" Jude asked, just as Kurt presented him with the cap. He laughed and smiled. "It's perfect," he joined the consensus. "He hasn't seen it yet?" he guessed.

"Still napping," Kurt told him. "I thought you'd like to see his reaction."

"You thought right," Jude replied, just as they heard a waking call from above.

"Daddy!"

"Be right there!" Kurt called back, handing the cap back to his father before heading up to bring Harry downstairs for his present.

THE END/TO BE CONTINUED (DAY 1614)

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****A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
********always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!********


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